A French blocking order, a pointed reminder from the EU’s financial watchdog and a Gibraltarian rulebook have, within a fortnight, brought the map for prediction markets in Europe into sharp focus.
On 16 July the president of France’s regulator l’Autorité Nationale des Jeux, ANJ, ordered the country’s internet service providers to block access to Polymarket, the best known of the prediction market platforms. The site, the regulator said, promotes illegal gambling services to a particularly large audience: 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique visitors in June alone.
The order was less a bolt from the blue than the closing act of a long correspondence.
